How does “design anthropology” relate to business design?

Business design is about applying a deep understanding of human experience to how we approach problem solving and innovation. It asks us to reframe business challenges not just as technical problems to be solved, but as human challenges to be understood, within broader systems of meaning, power and behaviour.

Design anthropology provides the foundational methodology for this work. It equips us with the tools to explore how people think, feel and act — not just in isolation, but in cultural, social and systemic contexts. Through ethnographic methods, scenario-building and participatory research, design anthropology helps us uncover the beliefs and assumptions that drive behaviour, and the mental models that shape how people imagine the future.

Put simply, we use design anthropology to get beyond the obvious. It’s one thing to know what your customer does. It’s another to understand why, and how that behaviour connects to identity, aspiration or constraint. That’s what design anthropology brings to business design: depth, relevance and the ability to design not just for people, but with them, in ways that resonate across both present and future contexts.

You have referred to design anthropology as "a future-making tool." How does it work?

Design anthropology is a human-centered research and design approach that helps us understand how people make sense of the world, and then works with them to shape what that world could become. It’s grounded in ethnography, the deep study of lived experience, but it shifts the temporal lens forward. Rather than just looking at what’s true today, it asks: what might be possible tomorrow, and how can we imagine that future together?

In our Climate Action Lab with Let’s Talk Science [which we'll talk about in a minute], we trained high school students to become researchers of their own communities. They used imaginative tools such as co-created future scenarios, to explore what meaningful climate action could look like in their lives. By imagining those futures together, they didn’t just share insights. They became actors in a system they were previously asked only to observe.

That’s the transformative power of design anthropology. It moves beyond problem-solving to "possibility-making." It treats imagination as a strategic asset. And it shifts the goal from finding answers to co-creating new questions. At Rotman, we teach our students that this kind of future-oriented inquiry is central to the practice of business design, because when we design with people, not just for them, we gain the power to shape the systems we live in — not just react to them.

What are some of the key skills and methods used by practitioners of design anthropology?

Design anthropology sits at the intersection of cultural insight and systems innovation. Practitioners borrow from anthropology’s deep toolkit; tools like ethnographic interviews, participant observation and contextual inquiry are adapted to help shape future experiences, services and systems.

One foundational skill is empathetic curiosity, which is the ability to invite people to describe their experiences in their own terms, and to listen for the mental models that shape how they see the world. This goes beyond simply documenting needs; it’s about understanding the beliefs, relationships and underlying assumptions that shape how people act and how they imagine their futures.

Another critical capability is co-creation, but not just in the “Post-it note on a whiteboard” sense. In design anthropology, co-creation is both a collaborative design method and a form of socio-cultural interpretation. When people articulate what an ideal future looks like, they’re also revealing what they value, what they fear and what systems they believe they’re living within. Our job is to make sense of those imaginings; not just to design solutions, but to surface insights about how change happens.

These methods allow us to see systems differently, and ultimately, to transform them.

Please describe your work on the Climate Action Lab initiative, which set out to uncover the barriers that prevent youth from taking climate action.

The Climate Action Lab (CAL) was a national participatory research and strategic design initiative commissioned by Let’s Talk Science, a national charitable organization that supports youth development through innovative, STEM-based learning. Funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada, the project set out to understand what prevents Canadian teens from taking climate action, and to uncover new opportunities for meaningful, youth-driven engagement.

I served as the research lead on the project, working in close collaboration with Ruth Silver, who designed and led the initiative. Ruth is the principal of Groundswell, a design research consultancy recognized for its leadership in experimental and innovative design research and strategy.

Over nine months, we supported 103 high school students and 17 university student coaches from 12 provinces and territories as they conducted peer-to-peer research in their own communities. Using a mixed-methods design anthropology approach — ethnographic interviews, surveys and foresight-based scenario elicitation — we uncovered the key barriers: youth feel disempowered, isolated and disconnected from the impact of their actions.

Most strikingly, we found that participating in the research itself felt like climate action. Students reported feeling ‘more empowered,’ ‘more connected’ and ‘more likely to engage.’ By shifting from researching about youth to researching with them, the project helped to reframe what meaningful climate engagement and systems change can look like.

You believe this project signifies the power of design anthropology for tackling wicked problems. How so?

Our methodology wasn’t just about understanding people’s views on climate action; it was about co-creating the conditions for them to experience agency, connection and impact in real time. That’s the power of design anthropology: when you involve people as co-creators in the research process, the act of inquiry itself becomes transformative.

The scenarios in this project weren’t just tools for eliciting opinions; they were invitations to imagine. And in imagining, participants began to articulate not only what they wanted, but what they believed was possible. This shift from being asked to act on climate change, to being asked how they might imagine a future where climate action is meaningful, activated a new sense of ownership. The participants gained skills, connection and confidence, and perhaps most importantly, they saw themselves not as recipients of a program, but as designers of the future. By redistributing the power to ask the questions, our method redefined what participation and impact could look like.

Creating a solution or program for any target audience entails paying attention to the broader context within which their actions exist. Talk a bit about the importance of this aspect and how to go about it.

Context is everything, because no action or inaction exists in a vacuum. To design anything meaningful, we have to understand the broader system of beliefs, relationships, constraints and histories that shape why people do what they do. This is where anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s idea of ‘thick description’ is especially useful. He famously differentiated a blink from a wink: the same movement of an eyelid, but entirely different meanings. The difference lies in context.

In the realm of innovation, we often misread the wink as a blink. We take behaviour at face value, or reduce it to data points, without understanding the deeper story. But context is the soil from which meaning grows. In the Climate Action Lab, for instance, we didn’t just ask why youth weren’t engaging in climate action. We looked at the systems around them, such as education, politics, media, mental health and the stories they told themselves about power, responsibility and hope.

To get to this level of insight, we used ethnographic methods that surface lived experience in rich, textured ways. We asked open questions. We listened for what was not being said. And we synthesized meaning across patterns. It’s in this act of ‘contextual excavation’ that truly transformational design becomes possible.

Every organization needs to move from understanding today to designing for tomorrow. What is your advice for getting started on the path?

Strategic planning often focuses on short-term goals, internal metrics and known risks. It asks: ‘What’s our next step?’ But if we’re going to design for tomorrow, we need to start with different questions: ‘What future might we be walking into? And how might we shape it, rather than just react to it?’ Designing for tomorrow requires widening your field of vision to include the cultural, technological and systemic shifts already taking shape at the edges. It’s not about predicting the future; it’s about building the capacity to anticipate and respond to uncertainty with imagination and intention.

In the Climate Action Lab, we invited youth to imagine different versions of a climate-engaged future. Those scenarios weren’t just creative exercises; they were tools for uncovering the assumptions, hopes and fears that shaped how young people perceived action and agency. By exploring imagined futures, we learned more about the present, and about what needed to change.

This is the work of strategic foresight: You work to identify signals of change, map critical uncertainties and stress-test strategies against alternate futures. To begin, identify the assumptions baked into your current strategy. Look for weak signals that might challenge them. And use foresight, not as a way to predict, but to stretch your thinking so that when the future arrives, you’re not starting from scratch. You’re already in motion.

Systems thinker Donella Meadows has identified an important leverage point for systems change: finding a point in a system—whether it be a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city or an ecosystem—where a small shift in one lever can produce big changes in everything. How can these leverage points be found?

Finding leverage points starts with stepping back and broadening the aperture. Before rushing to solve a problem, we need to understand the system it lives within; the relationships, interdependencies and feedback loops that shape how things behave over time. Systems aren’t just made up of parts; they’re made up of patterns. Leverage points are the moments or nodes within these patterns where an intervention can create outsized impact. These are opportunities not just for change, but for innovation at a systemic level.

We use tools like iceberg mapping to look beyond surface-level symptoms and identify the deeper structures and mental models that keep current patterns in place. We ask: What’s reinforcing this dynamic? What assumptions are embedded in it? What if we shifted the purpose altogether?

In the Climate Action Lab, our most powerful leverage point was a shift in goals. Rather than defining "climate action for youth," we invited them to co-create it. That small move reshaped how they saw themselves and how the system responded in turn. To find leverage points, you have to zoom out, map relationships and listen for meaning. That’s where transformation begins.

What key takeaways can readers bring into their own workplaces from your research?

Start with how you’re framing the problem. In both business and social innovation, we often leap to solutions without pausing to ask: Are we solving the right problem? Are we asking the right questions? The Climate Action Lab taught us that how we define the challenge shapes everything that follows, from who we involve to what kinds of futures we imagine as possible. Here are three takeaways for readers to apply in their own work:

1.  Broaden the frame. Look beyond the immediate issue and consider the system it lives in; what structures, incentives, relationships or assumptions are reinforcing the status quo?
2. Engage people as co-creators. The people closest to the challenge often hold the key to reframing it. Don’t just gather feedback; invite participation in shaping the direction from the start.
3. Use the future as a lens. Ask people not just what they want now, but how they imagine the future and what might stand in the way. This uncovers deeper insights into values, constraints and aspirations.

Ultimately, effective problem-solving and innovation starts not with answers, but with better questions and the wisdom to ask them differently.

This article originally appeared in the fall issue of the Rotman Management magazine and is based on Aiken-Klar's chapter in the book The Routledge Companion to Practicing Anthropology and Design.If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to the magazine or to the Rotman Insights Hub bi-weekly newsletter.